The Intelligent Design Network Talks Sense - Part 3 .

I’ve been pondering the general statement of objectives of the Intelligent Design Network intended to plead for objectivity and against the forced orthodoxy of naturalistic assumptions in the teaching of origins.  The first two points dealt with the subjectivity of explaining the unobservable events of the distant past by making inferences from present processes and the insistence that those inferences be given the status of irrefutable fact.  While those points are very well crafted, Item C is the part of the IDNet statement of that I find most critical.

"Implications of scientific explanations of origins unavoidably impact Religion, ethics, morality, government and politics. The implications of materialistic explanations of origins support the central tenets of non-Theistic Religions, while the implications of Teleological explanations support the central tenets of Theistic Religions. Both Theistic and non-Theistic Religions and worldviews address questions of ethics, morality, government and politics."

The Intelligent Design Network Talks Sense - Part 2

I started a series on a resource at IDNet which attempts to make a case for including ID as one acceptable theory of origins.  ID is not creationism as it makes no connections whatever to the Genesis account either in its assumptions nor its conclusions.  Nevertheless, ID has been tossed out of the public sphere by the courts on several occasions for failing to comply with the assumption that all things can be explained in terms of natural law alone. 

The second point of the IDNet statement of objectives is:

"The adequacy of scientific explanations of origins depends on an analysis of competing possibilities. Origins explanations use a form of abductive2 reasoning that produces competing Historical Hypotheses, that lead to an inference to the best current explanation rather than to an explanation that is logically compelled by experimental confirmation. Due to inherent limitations on the experimental validation of Historical Hypotheses, testing requires rigorous competition between alternative hypotheses so that their relative strengths and plausibilities may be compared. While competition among multiple hypotheses decreases subjectivity, it may nevertheless result in no adequate current explanation."

The Intelligent Design Network Talks Sense

Found a good source for Intelligent Design info at the Intelligent Design Network

Managing director John Calvert’s many documents on the site are some of the more readable and insightful I’ve seen. I am particularly interested in the “Statement of Objectives” IDNet sets out that are intended to get around the impasse between ID and Darwinism.

So I’d like to take some time to work through the main points. Here’s the first:

From the Bookstore...

So we get a mailing from a local Christian bookstore.  I leaf through it.  It has some of the latest Christian music CDs, a big promo for the video release of a recent Christian film.  Lots of knick-knacks related to valentines day and Valentines cards.  There are a whole slew of books about marriage and, yes, sex.  There is as section on finances.  There is an autobiography from a famous athlete.  Lots of decorative crosses, picture frames and a few pieces of jewelry.  A biographical movie about a doctor.  There are a number of Christian fiction entries, mostly in the "romance" category, a few devotionals and some self-help stuff for men.  There are some kids videos, "devotionals" for teens and more CCM CDs.   Add a couple of vids on biblical characters.

In 32 pages of ads, there are three bibles and one book by Lee Strobel on apologetics.  Not a single serious work of theological weight, save for Strobel's.

Just wondering, what does that say about the state of American Evangelicals?   

Origins – the first question

Been reading and pondering and arguing a bit on the web regarding the steady shift among Christians toward either theistic evolution or some form of progressive creation.  It seems more and more University educated Christians who may have come from fairly Bible centered backgrounds are abandoning not only young-earth creationism, but even a broad view of Intelligent Design.

For the moment I won’t argue specific details regarding this or that specific element of the ID vs evolution debate, nor debate the meaning of specific phrases in Genesis 1-3.  What I will question is the assumption those Christians who make this concession may have.  That concession is that God used “natural laws” including natural selection as his method of creation.  Here’s my main beef:

What Went Wrong...

My last post, some weeks ago, lamented the end of a journey. I have been able to give some thought to that journey and have reached a few conclusions.

Several years ago, I started down a path inspired by Tom Oden's "Rebirth of Orthodoxy". I may have misunderstood a bit of what he was saying in that book, but here is what I thought was the central thesis:

The "God-breathed" scriptures are alone the final authority by virtue of their inspiration, but the history of orthodoxy is the history of exegesis, and as such is a path toward greater Christian unity.

As I understood Oden, tradition has great value as a guide to the interpretation of scripture, but scripture remains the objective source of Christian truth. Whatever authority is given to tradition is secondary and derivitive and must be rooted in the Biblical text.

I saw in the Anglican doctrinal statement, the 39 Articles of Religion, a beautiful balance of absolute commitment to scripture as the final authority with respect for the history of how the church has understood scripture. Traditon, if one reads the articles in a normative fashion, is never allowed to assert as "necessary for salvation" anything that is outside the limiting boundaries of the Biblical text. This is why I chose one particular path and rejected others. I was never quite willing to reconsider Rome or follow other evangelicals to Eastern Orthodoxy because my evangelical commitment to the authority of scripture would not allow it, no matter how much I respected aspects of the early church that seemed compatible with either. For both Catholics and Orthodox, tradition plays a role that in some way subordinates the written Biblical text. The 39 Articles clearly insisted that whatever role the creeds, the liturgy and tradition may play, the source and limit is always the writte Word.

But the Anglo-Catholic influences, present in Anglicanism since the Reformation and increasingly prevalent since the days of the Tractarian movement, seems to have introduced an understanding of the role of tradition that goes "beyond what is written". Nineteenth century polemicists like J.C. Ryle were harshly critical of the "ritualism" introduced by Pusey, Newman and others, practices which had a place in the history of Christianity, but did not have a clear warrant in the text of scripture. The use of vestments, candles, incense, particular arrangement of church furniture all came under scrutiny as the excesses of the "traditions of men".

The End of a Journey

Three years ago I waded into the via media of Anglicanism. When I searched for a "middle way" I was attracted to Anglicanism for one primary reason - the Anglican Statement of faith known as the Thirty-Nine Articles. I was disillusioned with the fragmentation of the evangelical movement and burned out from a series of difficult congregational church situations.

I wanted the doctrinal stability of the creed and the tangible experience of weekly celebration of the Lord's supper. My desire for a connection to the history of the church in the creeds, in a view of baptism and the Lord's Supper as more than just symbols found a worthy statement of faith - the 39 Articles of Religion. I saw in "Global South" influenced Anglicanism a respect for the history of the faith that I hoped would mitigate some of the conflict over interpretations of scripture without losing sight of the Reformation principle that it is the Scripture and not the church that is the final authority.

In the 39 articles I found the following things: